I would love to see what some of you have created using Flash Catalyst. I want to see exactly what this software is capable of before investing the time into learning it. I know my away around Photoshop but have only dabbled in Flash. Thanks!

This is only a beta, so it is pretty risky to spend a lot of time creating something that might be used on a live project and will need editing in the future.

Here is a sample of my test with video... Please note that the video is in the background and the buttons are above it as if it were a simple static image...

I don't know how slow or fast it will play on older computers... On mine it loads very quickly and plays without hickups. The shoreter version of the video is about 2.2, the longer 6.2 megs. (I used H.264 .f4v format). Pages can be changed while video is playing -- This is Great feature!

One more thing -- the video was first imported into Flash CS4 because Catalist would not stop on the last frame... Unfortunetally this killed my ability to add play, stop - pause - buttons... (They only work with video that was imported directly to Catalist -- video wrapped into swf file does not work -- I hope this will change).

I'm one of those "people" referred to as "doing risky things" and have invested much sweat and frustration in creating a website using Illustrator CS4, PS CS4 and Flash Catalyst.

I'll post the link when it's done.

Technically I'm an idiot. I've been repeatedly creating the same website for months now, creating a bit, saving the file, recovering from the inevitable crash (desperately hoping there's a beta 3 - I check every day). It's a bit insane when you think about it.

The fact is that I need a killer website and I can't do it in Flash.

I don't know if it's me and a handful of other people who just can't seem to crack the Flash barrier, but I've spent countless hours studying, practicing, taking FLA files apart, bit-by-bit and I stil don't get it. And I've been a programmer for 25 years. I'm an artist though and that's probably the problem and also why FC is so appealing. It does the work behind the scenes (in-between crashes).

BUT - there's something positive in this. The longer I work with FC, the more I understand how Flash works. I didn't expect that to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if some day I create my website entirely in Flash simply because I know FC so well.

-jh

I think pioneers are really just people too stupid to know when to quit... ;o)

>>>>>>I don't know if it's me and a handful of other people who just can't seem to crack the Flash barrier, but I've spent countless hours studying, practicing, taking FLA files apart, bit-by-bit and I stil don't get it. <<<<<

Which only proves one thing that everybody probably knows by now -- Flash is a wonderful technology that is very badly implemented... It seems as if Adobe is only now waking up to this reality that Flash and Action Script needs GUI...

yes the detailed images are all on separated states... i actually had to cut down on the work i used because in the Beta you can only have 20 states or less, which was a bummer. the thumbnails are all buttons linking to the correlating states

The (About Us page) photo gallery and sound basics were done with catalyst and then tweeked in FlashBuilder/Flex to load the photos and make the sound on/off work correctly - this is an in progress project..

There might be a downside to developing our websites in FC Beta2 - Beta 1 wasn't compatible with Beta 2 - and I had to start over from scratch. So I wonder if B2 will be compatible with whatever's next?

A bit strange, when i go to www.bklightstyle.nl in chrome it displays it perfectly. Initially the page is blank and you can't see a thing, but after a few moments (depending on your connectionspeed, it's a flashfile of 25 mb)

Please check it again, if it's still not working, please tell me what you see (or don't for that matter)

to make your gallery happen you should create a custom component! those haver ther own "pages/states". I just made an horizontal image scroll bar with 30 thumbnails and when you clic on them the "big" image appears. Fc is really cool.

Creating a custom preloader, as I mentioned above, requires non-trivial work in Builder. If you want to replace the loader with a custom static image, then you should be able to customize the resources here:

If you want to use any type of flash file for your preloader, you will have to work in Flash Authoring (Flash CS4). Catalyst projects rely on the Flex framework, which is not available during the preloader phase. This means that you cannot use a Catalyst-generated .swf as a preloader. To load and play a simple .swf animation, you can adapt the code at the above link. To create a preloader that changes based on the loading status / percentage, you will need to do significantly more coding, and you can follow the steps at the below tutorials.

I thought on this topic I would see all sorts of examples of peoples work?? Ideas and examples of stretching the boundries.

I have want to build a user interface for my small business, a place where all my business administrative needs are prioritized and all action I need to take are prioritized and listed so I can perform better. I also want to build into the design different screens so that my client and suppliers can also work collaboratively with me for maximum productivity.

My business is property related, and property repairs and improvements to be specific.

My user interface so far can be seen here.

But I am struggling with splitting the design into components and with navigation and datalist components... Any help gratefully received if you are interested in the design.

First and foremost - I like what you did with your Interface. Thats actually pretty cool and seems like it will be quite well mapped out when its done. Good luck with it.

I think the reason we don't see more samples yet is the product really hasn't been released fully yet and therefore not many real life apps built yet. I think once FC finally ships with CS5 you will see more creative applications of it from many more creative minds.

By fall, I would bet there will be tons of examples out there. Looking forward to having some real life stuff done myself.

I am just learning Catalyst myself, but it seems there is some knowledgable (and even Adobe staff) that post here. As with Catalyst samples, I am sure there will be even more knowledgable people contributing here in the months to come.

Hello, can anyone please tell me how you can remove the top bar like the window, when you make an AIR Application and run it. And, how to make the background transparent. Can this be made in Flash Catalyst ? Or in Flash Builder (i`m new to this). Thank you very much !

Nicely done. Everything works as I would expect when I visit a Flash website.

Did you notice that when you go to the gallery and click on a an image's thumbnail - and then leave the gallery by clicking a link to a different page on the site - and then go back to the gallery - the image is still the same one you last clicked on, rather than resetting to the first image?

I think sometimes that's desirable, but when I was learning FC, I wanted my gallery image to reset to the the first image if the user left the page and then came back.

It was a number of months ago (like 6 or 10 or something) and I posted asking how to do that and there is a solution, but I don't remember what it was. It came from Adobe support and it's in the forum somewhere. If I can find my email I'll post it, in case others would want to be able to have that option.

Or maybe y'all know that. I haven't visited the forum for a while - I JUST WANT CS5 DESIGN PREMIUM!!!!! I CAN'T STAND WAITING!!!!

The way I worked it out was to make each of my main images a component. It was how I got over the 20 state limit too.

I have a row of icons that I made buttons along the bottom, when clicked they show/hide the main image much like you have on your site.

So, with my main image a component, I can set 2 states, one where visibility is 100% (I called the first state imagename_show) and the second state 0% (imagename_fade). The default state of all but one of the main images was set to fade.

In the Interactions panel I set the Change State to "imagename_show" on one button and then "imagename_fade" to the same button for all the others.

(I did propose to Adobe that the ability to multiple select items here would help). Then, on all the navigation buttons, add new interactions to Change State "imagename_fade" of all the main images and "imagename_show" to the image you want as the default. So, whenever you click Home, it hides everything. When you hit the Gallery button it loads with the State(s) you want. It takes a bit of time and is tediously repetitive but it works a treat.

If your a designer this program is a dream come true. It's pretty easy to learn if you know the basics of flash and you want to just get going? There are a few things that i'm learning and most of the videos help but I would suggest if you don't want to wait around for a programmer this is the way to go.

I just created www.SmakDigital.com for my personal site. Few bugs but I'm hoping these forums can help me iron them out.